We've only been in Sydney for two days and already I love this city. It's near the water, the weather is gorgeous (it's a good bit warmer here than it was in NZ so it's been nice to finally peel off some layers!), the city is easy to get around by trolley, bus, metro (double-decker metro cars!) and even water taxi, and the food has been great. We ate in Chinatown for lunch yesterday and then had tapas in Little Spain for dinner (we've totally fallen off the eating budget but we'll get back to that soon...). On our first day [View Full Entry]

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Meet Peggy Sue - a Toyota Sprinter (yeah, we'd never heard of it either) and our constant companion for the last 36 hours. We picked her up in Christchurch and drove across the Great Dividing Range to Greymouth on the west coast. The only thing Peggy Sue has going for her is an automatic transmission - learning to drive stick up and down the windy mountain roads through Arthur's Pass would not have ended well. Getting used to driving on the left wasn't that bad although Garron and I did have some trouble staying in the middle and would tend to [View Full Entry]

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8/4 - Milford Sound Per James Redfern's recommendation we signed up for a day trip from Queenstown west to Fiordland and Milford Sound. James was right - definitely some of the most stunning scenery we've seen thus far. We had a beautifully clear day for the 5 hour drive through the Great Dividing Range to the west coast. Our little bus made its way along the winding mountain roads overlooking Lake Wakatipu, passing waterfalls, mirror lakes, an avalanche area (they actually create controlled avalanches in the winter with helicopters and explosives to make it safe to use the road), a chas [View Full Entry]

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We knew that it would be winter in New Zealand and that it would make packing for this trip a challenge but somehow we still didn't bring the right clothing. We left the rather mild winter (60 degrees) in Auckland behind yesterday and landed in the middle of a beautiful ski resort town with nothing but a light jacket and a hooded sweatshirt - it's a rather chilly 37 degrees here. Woops. Luckily there are lots of touristy shops in town so we quickly procured hats, gloves, a down vest, etc. How is it possible that it's only day 3 of [View Full Entry]

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We left LAX on Sunday night and 12 hours later (with some help from the international date line) we arrived in Auckland, New Zealand at 5 am on Tuesday morning. A little tired but we decided to battle through. We went to the top of the Sky Tower (tallest tower in the southern hemisphere) for a great view of Auckland and the occassional bungee jumper flying past the observation deck. We passed on that for now... We did take a sailboat cruise around the harbour though - it was raining but the Kiwis are hearty folk so they handed us some [View Full Entry]

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Finally the wretched bar exam is over and Garron and I are ready to begin our adventures... We started with a beautiful weekend in San Diego for our friends' wedding (Congrats Carrie and IV!). The ceremony was in Balboa Park - just lovely and everyone had a great time at a very classy reception in the Photographic Arts Museum. Garron and I even summoned up a few UVA prep step skills that I thought were long forgotten... after a while we got really into the routine and unbeknownst to us the other dancers cleared the floor to watch. After (more or [View Full Entry]

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Next week my roommates and I are moving out of the 3 bedroom apartment that has been home for the last 4 years. It's bittersweet because I will miss them and living here but I'm also looking forward to moving abroad (finally!) and beginning a new career (lawyer) in a new city (London). The packing process has been tedious. For one thing, I seem to have accumulated a lot of stuff. In addition this will have to be one of the most organized pack-outs of my life. All of my worldly goods are being segregated into four piles: * one that [View Full Entry]

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